The Devil's In The Comments

Image via Wikipedia

An interesting thought (well, to me at least) to end the week. We've got this little phrase, 'the devil's in the detail', a version of 'never look a gift horse in the mouth' and many other similar wee pieces of wisdom that boil down to 'that looks like a great deal, why don't you take a good, long, hard look at it and make sure you know precisely what you're getting into here.'

When we're looking at information and opinion posted online, the devil's actually not so much lurking in the detail as in the comments - whatever you've got to say, it's how people, the 'community', reacts that's perhaps more telling. Take this example, the article that sparked my thinking about this. It's a really, really nice piece that tries to take a reasoned, moderate tone about the whole controversy revolving around the infamous South Park/Prophet Mohammed debate (and, by inference, the original Danish Cartoon Saga and the recent 'Let's All Draw The Prophet' saga). It basically asks Muslims to consider what the Prophet himself would do and counsels them to, effectively, turn the other cheek. I liked it.

But read the comments. Read how quickly that feedback descends into vituperation, unreason, hatred and bigotry.

What amazed me is how much stronger it all made the original post and how much the howling of the 'haters', directed at a moderate and well-argued voice, made that voice seem more reasoned and even more powerful.

The devil, these days, is certainly in the comments. But sometimes devilment doesn't half backfire!

GeekFest Beirut 2.0

As some may already know, GeekFest Beirut has been taken over by that most feared group of online types, Beirut's anarchistically inclined honchos, the Maniachis. There are GeekTalks aplenty and TechnoCases from Nokia and Telephone.com - more details on the website at www.geekfestbeirut.com! There's a whole load of other stuff going to be taking place, too - it's going to be a packed night, for sure.

For an update you can see this interview featuring the Maniachis on Future TV's MEGA with Chadi Abou Nohra,  explaining GeekFest Beirut,  which will be taking place from 8.00pm on the 29th May at Beirut's very funky Art Lounge.

A million thanks are due to Alex Tohme, who started the whole GeekFest Beirut ball rolling. It looks like it may well now be set as an ongoing treat in Lebanon's online/offline scene. Which is nice, isn't it?

Observer - Sex Shock or Crap Shlock?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This article in today's Observer (the Sunday newspaper of The Guardian) did rather strike a chord. I'm not much of a Dubai apologist but have to confess that having lived here for the past 17 years (I've been travelling around the Middle East for the past 24 and yes, thank you, I do feel old) the old place must be doing something right to keep me here.

I'm not about to set myself up ready to leap to Dubai's defence as everyone points out how crap it is. I spend enough time pontificating in various media already without adding 'official apologist' to my job title. But the Observer piece by 'William Butler', apparently recently returned after four years in Dubai, really does take the digestive.

There is a thriving sex trade in Dubai and I have seen it with my own two eyes. A great deal more could be done to address said trade, without a doubt. But if you really clamped down on that trade, along with many other trades in the city's margins and hideaways, you'd start to peck away at the principles that make Dubai a pleasant place to be in - that we're all pretty much left alone to do whatever we want as long as we're reasonably discreet and don't take it too far. That has always been at the very core of the Dubai I have been travelling to and living in since the eighties. They like to call it 'laissez faire'. I'm not arguing that this is perfection, but it's a damn sight better than an across-the-board 'No, you can't'.

So it's not that the piece is wholly inaccurate, it's just that it's peppered with silly errors, sweeping statements of fact that are unsustainable and unfounded assertions. So a piece that could have been a well-argued, explosive investigation into the trade and its many victims is, instead, a badly cobbled together and sloppy tissue of baseless assertion. What a wasted opportunity.

'I asked her what she did for a living. "You know what I do," she replied. "I'm a whore."
I know this is one man's word, but I wouldn't write that line into one of my books.

"It was obvious that every woman in the place was a prostitute. And the men were all potential punters, or at least window-shoppers."
Every woman a prostitute and all the men punters? In a five star hotel bar? Must be a different bar to all the ones I've gone to over the years... How is a prostitute 'obvious' in this way? The burden of proof here is met by some bloke's idea of what a prostitute looks like? What next from the Observer? "It was clear they were all gay"?

"Dubai is a heaving maelstrom of sexual activity that would make the hair stand up on even the most worldly westerner's head."
I'm really, really sorry but I must have been living an unusually cloistered life, a 'heaving maelstrom'? What have I been missing out on all these years?

"It is known by some residents as "Sodom-sur-Mer".
No it's not. Certainly not by anyone I know. Maybe to William Butler and his best friend Yeats. It's a daft epithet and too wooden to be popular.

"Western girls fall for handsome, flash Lebanese men"
This is simply awful. Is the Observer telling us that Dubai, the place where young people from all around the world come to seek opportunity,  is responsible for inter-cultural relationships? Pity the poor ugly, boring Lebanese men, too...

"most of the "romance" in Dubai is paid-for sex, accepted by expatriates as the norm"
This is absolute rubbish. Quantify 'most of the romance'. Nobody I know of accepts paid-for-sex as the norm. Why is this man allowed to assert such complete tosh in a national newspaper?

"Virtually every five-star hotel has a bar where "working girls" are tolerated, even encouraged, to help pull in the punters"
More baseless assertion. We aren't told how hotels encourage prostitutes to help pull in the punters. Most hotels are more than happy to give incentives to FaceCard holders, Emirates staff. But encouraging prostitutes? How, precisely?

"it would be hard to take into account the "casual" or "part-time" sex trade. One recent estimate put the figure at about 30,000 out of a population of about 1.5 million"
Whose estimate? I've got no problem with the number, crumbs, double it if you want - fill your boots. But prove it - at least have a source or a credible figure quoted. Again, we wouldn't let a press release out with that kind of fact standing up a story and I wouldn't expect it to last ten minutes out there if we did. Why the hell is a respected paper running this sort of thing?

"Although strictly illegal under United Arab Emirates' and Islamic law, it is virtually a national pastime"
Virtually a national pastime? WTF? We are, surely, losing the plot here...

"A few drinks with the lads on a Thursday night, maybe a curry, some semi-intoxicated ribaldry, and then off to a bar where you know "that" kind of girl will be waiting. In the west, peer group morality might frown on such leisure activities, but in Dubai it's as normal as watching the late-night movie."
No it's not. This is rubbish. And, again, it's uninformed opinion.

"Middle-aged men in responsible jobs – accountants, marketeers, bankers – who for 10 months of the year are devoted husbands, transform in July and August into priapic stallions roaming the bars of Sheikh Zayed Road."
This is amazing. I am quite sure that some of the 'summer bachelors' do indeed go astray, but this image of a city filled with 'Priapic stallions roaming the bars' every summer is bunkum. Lonely drunks, maybe.

"In my experience, many men will be unfaithful if they have the opportunity and a reasonable expectation that they will not be found out."
Why superimpose your experience of morality on everyone around you, particularly when it is quite so egregious? This 'experience' says more about the author than we perhaps need to know...

"Above all, there is opportunity. There is the Indonesian maid who makes it apparent that she has no objection to extending her duties, for a price; the central Asian shop assistant in one of the glittering malls who writes her mobile number on the back of your credit card receipt "in case you need anything else"; the Filipina manicurist at the hairdresser's who suggests you might also want a pedicure in the private room."
Singling out the nationalities like this is also telling. I have never heard of an Indonesian maid who extends her duties - certainly not willingly. I know one Sri Lankan maid who'd probably give you a good smack for even suggesting anything of the sort. And as far as manicurists (does she have to be Filipina, Observer?) go, those I know would be hurt and offended at the very idea.

"Cyclone, a notorious whorehouse near the airport, was closed down a few years back, but then it really did go too far – a special area of the vast sex supermarket was dedicated to in-house oral sex."
This is clearly crap. Cyclone was a nightclub, albeit one increasingly notorious for the 'working girls' to be found there. But it was not a whorehouse - and it was closed before 'William Butler' came to the UAE. So he is just (as he does much of the time) reporting overheard tittle-tattle rather than researched or sustainable fact. In the latter days I avoided Cyclone, it was never really my kind of place (being a middle aged Priapus every summer, you understand), but I'd love to see the evidence for an area of 'the vast sex supermarket' (whaat?) being dedicated to anything of the sort. And let us not forget, Cyclone. was. shut. down.

It's simply not good enough. This is not great journalism, this is not investigative reporting. It's a poorly hacked together, ill-informed job from a freelance former expat that a lazy editor has just unquestioningly jacked into the system to fill a page or two and it is the sort of thing that people here will point to when arguing that media freedom is a bad thing.

It's interesting that comments are not enabled on the online version. The Observer not willing to countenance another wave of clarification of the sort that expats have helpfully contributed to previous Dubai bunkum pieces?

I'd love to see this shameful rubbish referred to the PCC...

Sharjah Parks Get Reprieve Shock Horror

Image by kevin (iapetus) via Flickr

We have the inevitable 'clarification' on the Sharjah Parks Debacle. This will delight SeaBee as he loves clarifications like fat kids love cake.

The opening hours of Sharjah parks, cruelly truncated last week in a potty gambit designed to ensure gardeners don't cop an eyeful of jogger (and instead ensuring that every man in the street copped an eyeful), have now been 'extended' to 8am-1pm and 4pm-10pm according to a story in yesterday's Khaleej Times. Rivals for the big story of the day Gulf News and The National failed to get the scoop and so they miss the Pulitzer yet again.

This time the clarification comes in the shape of an 'extension' due to 'public demand'. What a laugh. Announcing the damn things, previously open all day, are to be limited to 4pm-10pm and then climb down by pretending it's an extension - and the newspaper slavishly reports it verbatim. Grief.


Earlier stories in Gulf News regarding an ID card requirement to enter Sharjah's parks (not a National ID card, silly, that would make it useful. No, a special 'I live in Sharjah' ID card issued by the Municipality) appear to have been incorrect, BTW, as there is no evidence of this being implemented (it was announced for May 1st implementation).

There would appear to be a great deal of confusion around Sharjah's parks right now. And nobody in our media is asking quite what the hell they think they're doing with these conflicting 'make it up as you go along' announcements...

(PS: I'd have missed this 'extension' story if it hadn't been for an eagle eyed Rupert Bumfrey)

Citizen Journalism. Bah.

Image by bunky's pickle via Flickr

Another Arab Media Forum already! It hardly seems a year since the last one. It's now become traditional for me to celebrate the birth of this little bloggy thing (with this post) during the 2007 forum, as it is that very event wot was taking place as I first hit the 'Publish Post' key.

This year's forum features more social media stuff than ever before, but that's not really terribly difficult as it has previously had the token panel or two, last year there was even a blogger. I have to confess I didn't bother going this year. It didn't really seem terribly relevant - many of the discussions are taking place in an environment where change is driving a huge movement away from traditional media sources - even here in the Middle East where we are, as all agree, lagging. Broadcast is less challenged than print, but the low quality of regional printed news media will just exacerbate the speed of movement.


I was interested to see that 'a participant in a session on citizen journalism' (Gulf News didn't bother naming him/her) talked about the National Paints fire, the news of which was broken by our very own Albert Dias (@albertdias), quickly followed up by a Twitpic (Twitpic or it didn't happen is increasingly the standard).  We managed to get Albert on the 'phone for the opening of the Dubai Today Radio Show which made for a brilliant and dramatic opening to the show as Albert provided us with a cogent and intelligent commentary from the scene, 200 metres away from the holocaust that was devouring the huge paint store, his voice surprisingly calm against the background of explosions and sirens. And yes, BTW, I'm delighted we scooped GN online by at least 45 minutes.

So was this the 'citizen journalism' that the Forum was, yet again, debating? Well, not really. Albert wasn't a journalist, he was an eyewitness. It's just that he has access to much more efficient sharing networks: breaking the story on Twitter doesn't mean reporting it. It's just that we get access to the cold, hard facts that are the stuff of journalism. The journalism came when we decided to broadcast his voice, questioning him with a listenership, and principles of reporting, in mind.

That role, the role of taking the evidence and collecting it to give as rounded and objective a picture as possible, will never change. More of the responsibility for it is being put in our hands as we sift through sources of hard news and data, shared sources of fact and opinion. But we'll always need people to bring it together for us. It's just that we're going to want them to be online and, ideally, to be independent and have a sound reputation. Mendacity, in this environment, is not really an option- and trust networks, reputational networks, will become the cornerstone to popularity, and therefore revenue, into the future.

Journalism doesn't actually need huge publishing houses and hundreds of makeup artists and printing presses and all the rest of it. It doesn't even need massive recording studios, satellites and specialised receivers. The networks in place today, even with the lack of lower prices and higher bandwidth in our tragically under-served region, provide journalists all the access they need to inform and serve their audiences. But they will never again be the only source of information available to consumers.

A debate they might just get around to having next year. Or maybe not until the presses finally grind to a halt and they realise that nobody cares anymore.

Dubai Vehicle Registration And The National ID Card. A Farce

Image via Wikipedia

Popped off to get the car registered, a tad late admittedly. Was just girding the old loins to do it when I was amazed to get a text from the RTA telling me I was in danger of blowing it and to get my butt online to register or go to a Shamil Centre. It's wrong of me to be so delighted when stuff like this happens, I know.

The Emarat Shamil station was amazingly fast, efficient and even friendly (up to a point) and the whole thing took just over 20 minutes.  How things have been transformed since the days of yore, when vehicle registration was at least a half day marathon often involving having to travel to other emirates to pay fines, multiple procedures, inexplicable counters with grunting staff and constant, shuffling queues!

It was almost all done, when the grumpy bloke behind the counter (the only grumpy bloke around, I have to say) says "Bassbort."

A passport is not, of course, a requirement that is outlined in the RTA's online vehicle registration guidelines. But I'm old enough to know that you need your passport for anything official, semi-official, quasi-official or where a bureaucrat is involved (for instance, the bank) or where you can see no conceivable need for a passport.

I thought I'd try my luck. "I have my ID card. Here."

Incredibly, the response was "Not this. Not need this. Want bassbort."

"But this is the National ID card. It has all of my information. My biometrics. It confirms me."

"Need bassbort."

"Why?"

"It has information. Visa expiry and sponsor name."

And so I had to get my bassbort out for him and pocket my, now confirmed as totally useless, national ID card, the document that, as you'll recall, was the most critical thing that you absolutely, certainly needed for vehicle registration as of last week.

I wonder if you can play tiddleywinks with them?

PS: There's a new rule whereby you have to have a little triangular warning thingy in your car. The Emarat stations sell 'em for Dhs30. 

Xero Error

This is the trailer for Xero Error, a 7-minute GCI science fiction film that was made by a guy called Ashraf Ghori and a group of people that volunteered their time, expertise and talent to make the film a reality. As many are aware, Ashraf and a number of his team came to the last GeekFest Dubai and talked  about the experience of making the film and Ashraf's desire to take it 'to another level' and get some serious funding behind making a full length film around the concepts and characters he starts to explore in 'Levity'

This is the YouTube link. And this is the film's IMDB entry (up 922% in popularity this week!)

I am constantly stunned by how this film was made in Dubai - Xero Error features an amazing soundtrack, great voice talent and really, really good CGI graphics - as good as anything I've seen on screen.

They're taking it to Cannes this week, where it'll be entered for the Short Film Palme d'Or (Palme d'Or du court métrage, actually, dahlings). The film festival starts Wednesday, volcano permitting.


It's great that a GCI movie was made in Dubai in the first place (in the year that gave us City of Life, a home-produced world-quality film made in, and about, the UAE). But wouldn't it be glorious if it took a Palme d'Or?
 

Sharjah Goes Mad (der)

Image via Wikipedia

Sharjah, the place where all roundabouts are called squares, has decided to shut all of its public parks until 4pm each day in order that the general public can avoid being stared at by gardeners.

Seriously.

The Emirate's public parks, all of 'em, will now open only from 4pm until 10pm.


According to a report in Gulf News, Sharjah Municipality official Yaseen Mohammad said: "The municipality cannot accept the responsibility of having its employees staring at women and making them feel uncomfortable."

The closures "combat this threat", according to the official, ensuring that gardeners will be able to 'tend the greenery' in the morning without having their eyeballs falling anywhere inappropriate.

Now gardeners will have to leave the parks to stare at women, a considerable inconvenience for them, I am sure.


The story's here, Gulf News having decided to take the angle of 'furious joggers' in its reporting of the move.

I'm still giggling...

Why Online Companies May Need To Think Analogue

Image via Wikipedia

I was drafted in to run the panel session on the effectiveness of online advertising at the excellent Digimedia conference wot took place in Dubai last week (lots of speaker videos here if you want to catch up on some of the excellent and thought provoking types that were there). Moderating panel sessions on topics about which I know very little indeed always brings joy to my heart, but as it turns out I had a question I wanted to ask in order to satisfy my own curiosity. And that question kicked things off very nicely indeed, thank you.

I'd sat through a presentation by Yahoo! complaining that only 1% of Middle East ad revenue was going to online sites, while print and TV still comprise the lion's share of advertising revenues. This despite the tens of millions of people in the region who are actively online, the 10 million-odd people on Facebook, the thousands of blogs and the popularity of online forums and social sites (portal Jeeran, for instance, pulls some 12 million unique visits per day - that's over ten times the circulation of the region's biggest selling paper, Egypt's Al Ahram).


The online industry complained that they are infinitely measurable, they can show click-through rates, measurable routes through content, response rates and activation rates - they can tell you who's where, how long for, where they came from and where they went to, what they watched, liked, responded to. And yet they're only 1% of the overall.

Which brings me to the question. If the publishing industry can go to an advertiser with nothing more than a basic audit (ABC or BPA) or even no audit at all and still sell them advertising in, say, 'Motorsport Today', what's the problem selling audiences of millions with virtually infinite measureability?

The answer, according to members of the audience, is that online companies in the Middle East aren't selling. They're behaving like online companies - 'the content's here, so come and get it'. But the advertiser base thinks like offline companies do - 'I'm here, come sell to me'.

And I can see how that disconnect could have crept in - I remember travelling to the Gulf as part of a sales team in the late 1980s to find that we had 16 people in Saudi Arabia at that time - all having flown out on 3-4 week advertising sales trips. A huge sales force, but one that was pulling in huge revenues. At the time we were just at the end of the era when the GM would pull out the company stamp and stamp the order there and then (legendarily, some would even open desk drawers and give you the cash!). It was good, old-fashioned sales - AIDA, DIPADA and all that. And it worked.


Advertisers in the Middle East have always bought a product that they can pick up and understand. They have bought a product intended for a target market they have in mind and want to reach. Car companies like car magazines and supplements, technology companies like technology publications. The online companies aren't selling the emotional appeal of specialised or relevant content plus reach - they're just selling data. They're investing in analysis rather than in teams of hungry young suits facing clients with compelling sales propositions that show how the market can effectively reach a given target audience for less than print or TV with content that makes contextual sense to the advertiser.

It is, of course, highly likely that I'm talking complete crap. But it didn't half get the panel session going!

Cereal Killer

Image by Sam Cockman via Flickr

The post I put up on Tuesday was at least partially influenced by a chat I was having with Dubai-based personal trainer Kai Mitchell in a few off-air moments during a Dubai Today radio show I co-hosted a few weeks ago.

It was Kai’s discomfort with the practice of selling people content-free breakfast cereal based diets that turned me on to the whole issue in the first place – and it was Nestlé’s atrocious ‘pull pull’ radio advertisement that pushed me over the edge into Tuesday's wee slice of grumpy bloggery suggesting you might like to eat paper instead of breakfast
cereal products as part of your new dietary regime.

You can only imagine my delight when the blog post attracted a couple of anonymous comments. I'm not a big fan of  these as they're often used to express negative sentiment without the grace of culpability.
Anonycomments can also come from people working for companies who are trying to influence debate without being open about who they are. This is infrequent precisely because it is widely considered as dishonest, egregious and stupid behaviour. And, as eny fule no, you can be traced even if you’re ‘anonymous’. I have written about this in the past, offering guidance to companies engaging with blogs.
Anonymous comment one came at just after 11am. I haven’t (obviously) edited it:

before you go ahead and diss ads make sure you know which is which :)

the tasteless "pull pull oh my god my fat thighs into a dress is worse than labor" is a Nestle Fitness ad,the 2 weeks challenge is a Special K line that has nothing to do with Nestle..
and ps. two totally different cereals, and at least they are promoting a relatively healthy weight loss program,as opposed to the other crazy fad diets out there

In this case, the comment was saying I had mistaken one ad for another, which I did not do. I also didn’t mention Special K or, indeed Nestlé. I purposefully referenced ‘the breakfast cereal people’ and not those nice, searchable brands Nestlé and Special K, let alone the Special K two-week challenge. Special K is a Kellogg's brand.  You know Kellogs? The breakfast cereal people represented by advertising agency Leo Burnett in the Middle East?

The second comment came 14 minutes later. Having obviously reconsidered the original response, ‘anonymous’ added (again I haven’t corrected the text) this:

You know i agree that that particular radio ad was HORRIFIC. And i would probably NEVER buy that brand. But not all low-fat cereal brands preach "get skinny by eating our brand."

Some brands, specifically the ones that offer the 2-week diet, target people who have unhealthy eating habits. The are not talking to the kind of people who are already health conscience and eat organic-type food. And in order to break any habit you need to have a disciplined amount of time doing the opposite. Why do you think there are a minimum of 21 days for rehab? Becuase research shows that it takes 21 days to break an addictive habit such as alcoholism. Similarly, 2 weeks is enough to get you off of junk food/fast food AND offers you an incentive (a little weight loss) to START leading a healthier lifestyle. And im sorry but at least THIS diet is healthier than starving yourself!
Plus,cereal is MUCH better food then the greasy crap people are used to eating now a days. It probably has more vitamins than they know existed!
So the ad you mentioned really does degrade other cereal brands that are honestly trying to help women become healthier.
Lastly, please don't take my comments personally. Everyone is entitled to their opinions but i believe that informed opinions are worth listening to more.

Of course, both comments – posted as ‘anonymous’ come from the same source: a place SiteMeter identifies only as 80.227.101.130 (Leo Burnett Middle East).

Now don’t get me wrong. The commenter may well not work for Leo Burnett. The IPs could have been mixed up or the commenter might have been a random, albeit arrogant and illiterate, visitor to Leo’s offices ‘camping’ on their wireless. I mean, we don’t want to jump to conclusions now just because some dribbling idiot has wagged their fingers at us in a mildly offensive and patronising manner, do we? So let’s stick to the facts.

As a direct result of these two comments, it is now likely that any number of search strings with permutations consisting of either of these two brands and questions regarding diet will bring this post (and therefore the original one linked again for your convenience here) relatively high into Google search results. That has the potential to drive thousands of people to read my little nag about the attempt to foster the uptake of breakfast cereal diets of questionable nutritional benefit who otherwise would never have bothered.

What do YOU think? I’d be particularly interested in your views if you are employed by the Kellogg Company, the world's leading producer of cereal and Kellogg's convenience foods, including Kellogg cookies, Kellogg crackers, Kellogg toaster pastries, Kellogg cereal bars, Kellogg fruit-flavored snacks, Kellogg frozen waffles and Kellogg veggie foods. You might have concerns regarding the whole Kelloggs two-week challenge promotion, or have worries about sugar levels in Kelloggs’ foods, the use of high fructose corn syrup as a cheap sweetener in breakfast cereals  or even iron content (for instance the Danish government’s 2004 ban on Kelloggs products because of the high added vitamin content and, apparently, non-dietary iron added to its products).

If you do, you might like to add a comment. I’d really prefer it if you could do so only if you are prepared to put a name to it. If you work for an organisation with a vested interest, perhaps you’d like to declare that – or just wait until you get home so that your IP doesn’t track straight back to your company’s network and expose your idiotic attempts at corporate mendacity by proxy.